The Pope said that "God is no magician. He has no magic wand to wave and something appears." controversial yes but if the Bishop of Rome says that statement, that is proof that the modern day Catholic Church has evolved unlike Jihadist Islam (no offense intended). I think the people who hate mostly the Abrahamic religions is because they dwell too much in the past, and cannot forgive, forget, and look forward. Also because most atheists rely way too much on science to be their answers to counter religion and deem it false. I have no problem with the other religions in the world unless they try to coerce me to their faith forcibly, like what is going on in the Middle-East currently with "The Islamic State".

For the record im agnostic but I feel in american atheism there is a real streak of arrogance among alot of atheists. Alot of them feel like atheism makes them feel inherently superior.

To be honest, I've seen this trend on Christians, Muslims, (Insert relevant religion/belief here). Its the PERSON not the religion that's to blame for a person's arrogance. :)

Santera

Yeah that is true but the trend of prickish arrogance in atheism has grown in recent years. The problem with atheism is it started to have there own equivalent to christian fundamentalists (ie Judgy people with a superiority complex convinced there beliefs are better than yours) .

I am a person of faith, but i've found in this day and age you have to be some what careful when using the words to describe your faith. i have found people hate people of religion because in all religions there are those who are fanatics. They claim to be someone of faith and do the very things someone of faith is taught not to do. Like killing people in the name of there god. Or telling people God hates them because they do something they see as sin. People do at times hate people of faith and ive come to see its because of those who claim to be of faith but harm others in its name that gave us all bad names. Not all none people of faith hate us not all people who claim to be of faith truly are. At least that is what i've come to find in my life..

I don't like getting into arguments so I'll try to answer without offending anyone(and fail). I have no issue with deistic types of religions, or ones that take a more personal or spiritual focus. I hate the type of religion that has infallible holy books that can't be questioned. In my opinion most religions were created as a way to explain things that people at that time didn't understand.

We know now that the Earth is not the center of the universe, and we know approximately how old it is. Certain religions contradict this and other information, some people accept this and others for some reason don't. If that holy book were divinely written or inspired, than the information in the book should reflect reality. In my opinion this shows that the book was written by people explaining their interpretation of the world around them, which is limited to the knowledge available at that time.

Of course these books contain other information like morals, my concern is that if the aforementioned information is wrong couldn't other parts of the book be wrong? Just like the scientific information at the time, couldn't the information dictating what is right and wrong, also be flawed? I think history shows well that human being as a whole weren't always the best at dictating what is right and wrong, we no longer execute people accused of witchcraft. I'm not saying there's no valuable information contained within these holy books, I'm just not sure they were intended to be cherrypicked.

Most of my family is Catholic, as I once was, and they don't seem to take the Bible literally and I assume that's what most people do. Unfortunately those that do take it literally seem to be the loudest, which paints an inaccurate picture of the whole group. The same thing can be said of Atheists as well, some of them make us look really arrogant and it's not helping.

My biggest issue with religion is when it makes it's way into our laws, despite what many people think this is not a Christian nation. I've had to explain to people on multiple occasions, that "In God We Trust" and "Under God" we're not always in their respective places. Those weren't added until the 1950's and I'm certain the founding fathers would not agree to the change. There's the whole issues of marriage and teaching creationism as science, separation of church and state was created for a reason. A biblical definition of marriage shouldn't affect the laws of a secular country and science classes should be teaching accepted scientific facts.

In other countries people are literally dying fighting for their religion, Sunni and Shiite Muslims fight over which branch of the same religion is the correct one. Sure it's not an issue here, but innocent people suffer because of things like this and as a human being it pains me to see it happening. Sure conflicts in other countries aren't 100% because of religion, there are sometimes political motivations in these types of things too.

I usually don't like to write this much, especially about this subject but I'm sick and have nothing better to do. I tried not to sound too douchey and whatnot, hopefully I succeeded.

TL;DR - I don't mind religion when it's a personal, spiritual type of thing. It bothers me when organized religion is used to affect laws and negatively impact the lives of others.

For the record im agnostic but I feel in american atheism there is a real streak of arrogance among alot of atheists. Alot of them feel like atheism makes them feel inherently superior.

To be honest, I've seen this trend on Christians, Muslims, (Insert relevant religion/belief here). Its the PERSON not the religion that's to blame for a person's arrogance. :)

Santera

Yeah that is true but the trend of prickish arrogance in atheism has grown in recent years. The problem with atheism is it started to have there own equivalent to christian fundamentalists (ie Judgy people with a superiority complex convinced there beliefs are better than yours) .

Again, its the person not the belief that is arrogant. If you want someone to blame, look into a mirror. We're all responsible, to some degree or another. :)

I don't hate on it. I believe everyone has the RIGHT to do and believe in whatever they want as long as they don't 1) Hurt anybody and 2) Break the law. Who is anyone to say something is bullshit anyway

For the record im agnostic but I feel in american atheism there is a real streak of arrogance among alot of atheists. Alot of them feel like atheism makes them feel inherently superior.

To be honest, I've seen this trend on Christians, Muslims, (Insert relevant religion/belief here). Its the PERSON not the religion that's to blame for a person's arrogance. :)

Santera

Yeah that is true but the trend of prickish arrogance in atheism has grown in recent years. The problem with atheism is it started to have there own equivalent to christian fundamentalists (ie Judgy people with a superiority complex convinced there beliefs are better than yours) .

Exactly. I would just go and say that every belief system including atheism have people who have some sort of superiority complex. These extremist even attack their own and tell them they aren't true <insert belief system here>.

To answer OP it's not a hatred towards the religion( can't talk for everyone), but it's the extremist. The people who force their beliefs on to others and will try to use religion as a means of control.

Religion in itself is not bad, but it's how people use it. Want to control a large group of people take their religion and use that to control them. Look at all the cults for example like Jim Jones. He took a bunch of innocent people who were part of his church to Jonestown, made himself out to be a god, and eventually had them all kill themselves. Don't allow people to think for themselves and question you as their leader. If they do get rid of them. Keep your flock stupid and you got control. Cults prey on those they know they can manipulate. From my personal studies I've learned to be very careful with what person I trust and that I should draw to my own conclusions and understanding. I'm a Christian, but I do have views that would differ from quite a few (e.g. I accept Evolution).

PauPowwrote: The Catholic Church burned thousands of people alive for things like studying the circulatory system (Miguel Servet) or trying to improve medical treatments.

The circulatory system is not why they killed Michael Servetus. It was to do with his false views on the way God punishes people. Not to say that the church has not been responsible for horrible things, I just prefer it if you got your facts straight.

No one hates religions. They just advocate not believing everything in a book with no factual proof.

They want you to come to your own conclusions instead of believing every piece of dogmatic propaganda is force fed to you.

People dont hate religion, we hate those douchy people within a religion that think its okay to cut peoples heads off for being an apostate or telling homosexuals they can't get married because "the bible says so".

We hate people who disregard common sense and scientific evidence and say "nope, dinosaurs existed 6000 years ago, we just cant find them because the earth was totally flooded for 40 days even though there isn't enough water on the planet to actually flood the entire planet for that period of time".

Being religious, is totally fine. Being a condescending self righteous asshole on the other hand, who tries to force his beliefs on everyone else... isn't.

Being religious, is totally fine. Being a condescending self righteous asshole on the other hand, who tries to force his beliefs on everyone else... isn't.

This also applies to athiests.
The picture of religious people you just painted isn't an accurate portrayal of the vast majority of religious people.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontifical_Academy_of_Sciences
The official stance, at least of Catholicism, is that science and religion are in agreement, and science helps to add to our spiritual understanding of the world.
Douches are douches. That has little to do with religion. You can be an athiest douche.
and if I'm not mistaken the Bible is generally taken as allegory and a very culturally skewed history book.
By most people at least. There are also people who think they've been abducted by aliens and lizard people live in the center of the earth.
Non-religious people, I might add.
You can't just blame religion for everything wrong with the world. Scratch that, you can, but you won't be right.

Gish Gallops look it up.

We don't force our world view onto others we don't care what people believe or don't believe what we do is defend our right to have our world view. What we do is defend the right for others to have their world view. What we want is a highly educated society that is able to make rational choices about how it works.

We who do not have a religion do not seek conflict if we do they are the exception to the rule not the rule. Mostly they seek conflict to educate since you do not learn unless you views are challenged. They use that conflict as a teaching tool as it has been done for centuries challenge your preconceived notions at all time they may very well be wrong. You do not learn unless you are challenged.

I tend to find more douches when dealing with those who have closed minds and are unwilling to accept new concepts and ideas as reality. They react violently and it tends to get ugly mostly because they aren't even willing to listen or begin to even try and understand. If you consider a douche to be someone that is willing to fight for what they think is the right path than you need to readdress this concept and consider it to be the person that is unwilling to listen or learn and pushes their ignorance onto others.

The bible you are correct most normal people do take it as allegory and as a skewed history. However this is not always true there are many folks out there that take it as literal truth. This is why we get Religious freedom laws that allow for discrimination against people based on sexuality and gender identity. Why we have groups pushing their view of morality, which is based on that book. So until they stop pushing their beliefs I will keep fighting back to defend my right not to believe.

As for the crack pots we look at them the same way we look at religious folks. They also tend to be religious not what you would consider religious but still they have a faith. While the Church states religion and science are in agreement not all members of the church hold these views and this can change with a new Pope. Religion does not have finial say in morality and it really shouldn't it has a terrible track record as I stated. Morality should be created from the society of the many not the few. This makes the society more equal not less.

While religion can't be blamed for every ill in the world it sure as hell as been used to justify several of them and still is to this day.